


Cashing In My Bad Luck

by Axis2ClusterB



Series: Best of the Worst [5]
Category: Sons of Anarchy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, M/M, Male Slash, oh the angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-24
Updated: 2012-10-24
Packaged: 2017-11-16 22:28:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,090
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/544533
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Axis2ClusterB/pseuds/Axis2ClusterB
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Juice lays his cards on the table.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cashing In My Bad Luck

**Author's Note:**

> Contrary beta'd, and she's awesome. Originally posted on LJ at soa-slash in a slightly different form.

/So if, by the time the bar closes, you feel like falling down… I’ll carry you home tonight/

It’s chaos, the night of the wake. As soon as the hearse clears out, the serious drinking starts in the clubhouse, and it’s oppressive enough – grief drunk – that Juice switches to beer early in and nurses those slowly, keeping an eye on Chibs. He keeps his distance at first – watches as Chibs pours shots down his throat; counts the time when the older man disappears into the back with a crow-eater with a willing smile; even manages to win a distracted round of pool against Phil with Chibs planted firmly on one of the leather couches with yet another fresh bottle of booze – no shot glass this time – and a determined look on his face.

But when he finally loses Chibs, then finds him sitting in the alcove with JT’s bike - tears on his face, bottle in one hand and the ornate rosary he usually keeps tucked out of the sight in the other - he draws the line, reaches for the other man. “We’re going home, and we’re taking the van,” he says, and Chibs just sighs and nods, takes Juice’s hand and lets the younger man help him to his feet.

It’s a chore getting him to the van – Juice is pretty sure he’s never seen Chibs this fucked up, and in more ways than one. He finally gets his shoulder worked under Chibs’s arm, both arms wrapped around the other man’s waist, and all but hauls him out of the clubhouse. He sees the speculative look on Bobby’s face as they leave, finds he really doesn’t give a fuck right now. He’s pretty sure that a public meltdown wouldn’t be any better to watch than him dragging Chibs home. He rolls down the passenger side window, positions Chibs’s face to the cool night air, and hopes it’ll sober him up enough to help him get himself inside the house.

~*~

Juice is finally breathing easier when they get home, make their way inside. Chibs manages to almost hold his own weight this trip, balances by teetering against the doorframe while Juice fumbles the key in, swings the door open and gets them both inside. “Almost there,” he grits out, most of Chibs’s weight still on his shoulders as he gets them headed down the short hallway and finally to the bedroom. 

Chibs almost collapses on the side of the bed - elbows on his knees, head hanging down - and Juice ignores that he reeks of booze and smoke and pussy, ignores the swaying of his body and settles himself at the other man’s back, puts his hands to use on the tight muscles. Chibs’s shoulders are a solid line of tension and grief, and Juice can feel the other man’s breath hitching low in his chest even as his shoulders start to relax. “Juicy, I just-“ Chibs starts, and that’s when his phone starts buzzing. Chibs sighs, and Juice thinks that he’s never looked so tired as he does when he drags the phone from his pocket. Juice is close enough to see the international code that he knows well in the backlit screen, and every bit of looseness he’d rubbed into Chibs’s shoulders disappears as he says, “Gotta take this, lad.” Chibs is rising as he flips the phone open, murmurs, “Grádhág,” as he makes his careful way down the short corridor to the bathroom – really, it’s more of a ‘stumble while leaning against the wall’ kind of thing. Juice has heard Chibs say that word into a phone in the dead of the night before, knows that it means that Chibs will be in the bathroom for awhile.

Tries not to let it piss him off.

It’s taken a fuck of a lot of willpower to not look that word up, figure out just what it is that Chibs calls Fiona when she calls in the middle of the night, pulls him out of their bed. And he gets that he’s probably not being fair tonight, knows she’s calling because she’s heard about Ope – like she hears about every goddamned thing, Juice has decided that she’s worse even than Gemma – but he’s still slamming drawers as he changes into pajama pants, gets his pipe and the baggie, knocks out the residue from last night and sets to reloading the bowl. 

He sits alone in the middle of the bed, listens to the quiet drag of Chibs’s brogue from behind the closed door, thinks about how everything suddenly feels broken past fixing. How much of that is his fault.

Hits the pipe.

Thinks about how they all looked when they first got back from county, staggering into the cool dimness of the clubhouse, all of them seeming somehow smaller.

Hits the pipe.

Thinks about church that afternoon, turns it over in his head, trying to work out what was wrong there – besides the fucking obvious, of course.

Hits the pipe.

And like sometimes happens – what he was hoping for – the stillness and the weed clear the jumble in his head. Smooth out the worry over the club and the pain over Ope and the conflict rolling his gut over Chibs and the hushed conversation that has now slid thoroughly away. It’s almost like this weird self-hypnosis, and he lets his mind drift.   
The dissent this afternoon. Tries to put it all together, figure where it started. 

Juice drifts a little more, feels like he’s close to an answer when the bathroom door is flung open, Chibs trying to storm down the hall and slowed by his own feet, hitting the walls in all the wrong places. 

“Fuck it,” Juice mutters, holding the pipe up as Chibs’s weight sinks the bed. “Take a hit, babe, and then we’ll talk.”

The eye that Chibs throws him through the curtain of his hair is both dire and intoxicated, but Chibs purses his mouth around the pipe stem, inhales when Juice lights it, holds it and holds it until nothing but a thin stream of green-smelling smoke leaks out. Juice waits til he hits it again, then cocks an eyebrow. “Well?”

Chibs huffs out the last of his smoke on a sigh. “Guess I could act like I don’t know what you mean, laddie, but we both know I do.” 

Juice puts a hand on Chibs’s head, strokes his hair back. It’s not something he would usually allow himself, but right here and right now, Chibs is his, dammit, and he’ll take what comfort he can. Chibs closes his eyes and leans into it, sighs as he relaxes against Juice. Juice just leans into it for a minute, enjoys that lack of space between them, then takes a deep breath and asks it, knowing it can’t be undone. “Grádhág?”

Chibs pulls away, and the look he gives Juice is honestly surprised. “Startin’ there? Really, lad?”

Juice shrugs. “Yeah. That’s the one we gotta get by if I’m staying.” He hears himself say the words, is kinda surprised to realize that he means them.

Chibs sighs. “Fuck it, then. Lemme take a shower, clear my head a little first?”

_Wash the pussy off,_ Juice thinks, but there’s no real irritation about that, Chibs fucking some croweater. There’s no _feeling_ there. “Yeah,” he says. “I’ll be here.”  
What he intends to do is worry some more over what happened in church earlier; what he ends up doing is some kind of trippy doze – psychedelic dreams – until he feels the bed move under Chibs’s weight; realizes his nose is full of the smell of clean male beside him. He rolls to the warmth, comes back to himself just about the time he makes skin to skin contact.

“Wasn’t gone that long,” Chibs says, smiling down with fondness in his eyes.

“Yeah,” Juice says, sitting up and rubbing at his face, “but I had plenty of time to get high while you were in there before. Not firing on all cylinders yet.” He shakes his head, pulls himself together. “So. We talking?”

“Yeah,” Chibs says, reaching for his smokes and the ashtray, lighting up. “Grádhág means beloved.”

Juice takes a deep breath, sits up and snags one of Chibs’s smokes. “Think I’ll need one, too.”

Chibs huffs out a soft laugh. “Doesn’t mean what it used to, if that helps,” he says. “I love her, laddie, always will. Wouldn’t know how not to. But… it’s different now. She’s there and I’m here and that won’t change.”

“And if it did?” Juice asks, not sure at all if he wants an answer. “You asked her to come back, when we were in Ireland.” Remembers being hugged by Fiona on a couch in a rectory in Belfast, her soft voice in his ear when she told him to watch out for Filip, try to keep his big heart from getting his throat slit.

“Then there’d need to be three of us having this talk,” Chibs says. “Juice, I’m not sure what you think we’re doin’ here, but you’re not second. Never second. Wouldn’t have asked you to look out for my girls in Belfast if you were second in anythin’. Wouldn’t have trusted you with ‘em.”

Juice reaches out a hand to Chibs’s bare chest, traces his hand over the name inked there – Kerrianne – in some sort of Celtic font. “Alright, then,” he says quietly. “Alright.” 

Chibs reaches up, takes Juice’s hand against his own chest. “If we’re talkin’ now, I need some answers too, lad.” He takes a deep breath, and Juice has a moment to feel the world rock under him even before Chibs says, “The hell has been going on with you, lad? You’ve been comin’ outta your skin since you got outta Stockton. Why?”

Juice finds himself just breathing in, breathing out, aware that his face has frozen into some sort of mask that is – he hopes – neutral. “Wow. Just how sobering was that shower?” he asks, hoping the humor lands.

Chibs cocks an eyebrow. “Puked three or four times. Drank a huge glass of water. Nearly scalded my skin off in the shower. Sober enough.”

Juice reaches for the pipe, checks the bowl before putting the stem to his mouth and lighting, inhaling deep, more for the moment to think than anything. Chibs moves restlessly as he does it, and Juice realizes he hasn’t gained anything but a little more mistrust. Juice holds it in his lungs as long as he can, breathes out what’s left of the smoke on a cough, and gets that the only way to do this is straight up. “Chibs,” he starts, and can’t quite get it out like that, so he tries again - “Chibbie… if I tell you this - if I give you truth here - it’s gonna be something that your Sergeant’s patch might have to answer.” He feels how still Chibs gets beside him, bites back on unnecessary words.

You might have to kill me. Kill me, and put me deep in an unmarked grave. Never say my name again, except to say that I got out or that I fucked it all up. You might have to turn me into a story to scare the prospects with.

What he gets in response is something he wasn’t quite expecting.

“Juice… Jesus fuckin’ Christ, boy, do you really think you can give me shit like that and just quit? Gimme a buncha silence I gotta fill? What, you wanna make me ask you what I oughta kill you over? I can’t do it – WON’T do it.” Chibs draws a shaky hand over his face. “Fuck it, you can’t quit now.”

Juice is pretty sure all of the air leaves the room as the words hit. “I ratted. Potter and Roosevelt… they had shit on me, and I ratted. All of those times that I said I had to take my bike and clear my head… I was in federal holding. I just… fuck, Chibs, I kept trying to fix shit, and I just kept getting a deeper hole. I couldn’t get out.” There’s more he could say, but he bites it back. There’s no taking this back, and he knows it.

“Miles?” Chibs’s voice is less than a whisper, and Juice closes his eyes against the weight of it in the room.

“Caught me with the brick of coke, and I shot him in the face.”

“Jesus fucking Christ, Juicy,” Chibs says, but the words are broken and low, none of the explosion that Juice was waiting for – almost hoping for. “Ah, goddammit, lad. Ach, goddammit.”

“Chibs –“

“Shut it,” Chibs says. “You don’t talk to me right now. You don’t… fuck it, you can’t…”

“I can fix this,” Juice says, and he hasn’t felt so desperate in weeks, had actually let himself almost forget it in some sort of weird self-defense.

“You can’t,” Chibs hisses. “You can’t, and I can’t. This is the one goddamn thing we can’t fix, Juice, either of us. Jesus Christ, you’ve fucked us and I can’t see a way out of it.” 

It’s the closest that Juice has ever heard the other man to panic, and it fuels everything he’s been trying to sublimate, all of the things that have exhausted him for so long. “So what are you going to do?” he asks. “What are you going to do with me?”

~*~

/Darling, if you love me, would you let me know?/

Chibs slams awake, heart in his mouth, a single gunshot ringing in his ear. He manages to keep it to a tensing of his body, all but holding his breath til his heart rate slows, his senses coming back online enough to take in dim gray light seeping around the blinds and the warmth of Juice huddled under the blankets next to him, not a sign of the lad sticking out anywhere.

That itself is enough to take Chibs aback, dig a pit in his gut at the way things have changed in such a short time. Juice always burrows, yeah, but there’s always a hand sticking out – hell, even a cold foot – something to _touch_ Chibs, something to ground them, one to another. Even with all of the absences for a while there that Chibs has come to understand came from Juice being locked up – during the rare nights together then, that’s one thing that’s been constant.

Juice always needs touch. 

It’s strange how this small thing more than anything last night has made the situation unfixable to Chibs’s mind.

His throat prickles and the flop sweat breaks out as he feels last night's excess catch up with this morning and rolls out of bed in a rush for the bathroom. He just manages to get the door shut behind him before kneeling on the mat to retch quietly over the toilet. The puking burns, all liquor-laden bile until his muscles shake, and he pretends the tears streaming down his face are from that, rather than the thoughts of Juice in the bed down the hall.

Chibs finally thinks he’s done – what seems like hours later - flushes the mess and sits back against the solidity of the door, shaking hands pressed to his face. He breathes deep, in and out around the terrible taste still caught in his mouth, finally sighs and hauls himself off the floor to find his toothbrush. He carefully avoids his eyes in the mirror as he brushes his teeth and uses the mouthwash Juice keeps in the cabinet, then repeats the process.

Flipping the light off, he leaves the tiny bathroom without ever looking at himself.

Juice is still a softly breathing lump in the middle of the big bed as Chibs pulls his jeans and a t-shirt on, and he breathes a soft sigh of relief at this, another as he pulls the door closed with a soft snick behind him. Despite it being just past five in the morning, he goes straight to the cabinet above the sink that Juice has designated as the liquor cabinet and pulls out a bottle of the whiskey that the lad had started stocking when Chibs started spending more time here than at his own place. He takes it out the back door and collapses on one of the mismatched chairs that Juice has been using as patio furniture, fumbling the lid off and taking a shot that probably qualifies as two, at least. He keeps going til the sky is pink and his knees are feeling unsteady, then he pulls the flip phone – prepaid - from his pocket and opens it. He looks over the extremely short contact list – like there’s any answer but the obvious one – and says a quick prayer to a god that he hasn’t believed in for years before he pushes a button.

It’s just one more thing with the stink of the irrevocable all over it.

When he gets back to the safe haven of the bedroom, he just sits on the side of the bed and watches the plaid duvet move up and down with Juice’s rhythmic breathing. All told, he knows he’s probably waited longer than he can afford to when the lad finally starts to get restless, bedclothes shifting with Juice’s surface from deep sleep. Even then, even knowing the time restraints that have been put in place, he can’t seem to make himself act until he starts to hear the lad’s voice – until his own face creases with a fond smile when juice mumbles something that sounds like, “I don’t want to see the aardvarks again.”

Chibs stands then, slides his jeans off and strips out of his shirt, crawls into the bed and starts the process of untucking the covers. He keeps worrying at the cloth until finally Juice rolls to him, and Chibs moves with it, kisses the lad long and deep until he’s nothing but a boneless mess of warmth and compliance and wanting. Then he slides his body down the compact length of Juice’s, uses his tongue and teeth and fingers to reduce him further, into begging and rough-throated need. 

Finally, when there’s nothing but Juice’s rough voice – “Please, god Chibs, please baby please” – breaking raw to the ceiling, he has mercy and opens his throat to Juice’s full cock, lets it slide in on slick heat like he hasn’t done in years – too many years, and Chibs shoves the thought of Jimmy and Fi and being young in Ireland away – and slides two fingers in, crooking where the lad writhing under him needs them. When Juice finally cries his name on a long, breaking treble he just swallows it harder, taking it down when Juice comes apart beneath him.

He waits until Juice is actually punching at his head, then pulls off and grins up, meeting the dazed eyes above him. “A’right way to wake up, yeah?” he asks, determined to give this to both of them – a few more moments to just enjoy each other in this room away from time and obligation and all of the other things that have come to hang over them in the time since the lad finally let himself sleep. Juice huffs out soft laughter, still boneless and relaxed, his fingers carding through Chibs’s hair. Chibs closes his eyes and rests his aching skull against Juice’s hip, wanting this more than anything, this moment before it all comes back.

He realizes it when the lad comes fully awake, opening his eyes reluctantly when he feels Juice stiffen under him and hears him say “Babe?” in that tone that lets Chibs know sleep and well-fucked goodwill have come and gone.

“I’m here, lad,” he answers, forcing the words past the thickness in his throat.

“What are we doing?” Juice asks, flat, and it comes to Chibs that he has one last chance.

He levers himself away from Juice’s hipbone, out from under the covers and looks up, knowing by the look on Juice’s face how his own must look better than from any mirror. “You can leave,” he offers, surprised at how calm he sounds. “You can pack a bag and go. I haven’t talked to any of them, and you can just go. No one will ever know why, not for real, lad.”

Juice just smiles, and the peace in it hurts Chibs to his soul. “I’m gonna go take a shower, Chibbie.” He glances toward the yellow sunshine starting to stream around the gaps in the blinds. “It’s getting late. I’ll be quick.”

Chibs is pretty sure that those minutes crouching in Juice’s bed - _their_ bed – are the longest he’s ever had, and that’s including those where Fiona was in labor and had started to falter. Juice is true to his word – he’s quick – and Chibs has just started to think that maybe he should call Fiona and ask if she can hide them when the boy opens the bathroom door and comes down the hall, jeans in his hand. It’s intimate in a way that Chibs hasn’t known in years and it sets him back until all he can do is stare as Juice goes about the mundane routine of dressing, pulling himself together for the day.

However short this day may be.

He makes himself take the example, reaches for his own jeans and worn shirt, pulls himself together as well in the silence. Doesn’t say a word as Juice reaches for his hand, drawing it into the warmth of his own as they leave the bedroom. Then he finds himself giving the lad time when he pulls them to a halt in the living room and looks around, takes in the space that Chibs knows he’s spent hundreds of hours in. Finally, Juice looks back to him again and smiles, says, “Okay,” and they move on. 

Chibs really doesn’t realize until they get to the bikes – parked companionably together under the carport – that he’s been led, but that’s when Juice takes the helmet from his own bike and puts it on, then throws his leg over the back of Chibs’s bike and gives him an expectant look. Chibs doesn’t bother with the words and lets Juice ride bitch until they’re almost to the garage, then pulls over three blocks out and lets his bike power down as he yanks his helmet off and turns to the man behind him. 

“Get the helmet off,” he says roughly, digging in his cut for his smokes as Juice bares his face. That _look_ is still there, peaceful and complacent through the cloud of Chibs’s smoke. “Stop it,” Chibs begs, dragging a gloved hand over his face. “Juicy, _stop._ ”

“I have,” Juice says, voice quiet against the song of the birds in the trees above them. “I really have.”

~*~

Nothing has ever felt like this to Chibs, walking through the quiet clubhouse with Juice. The closest he can come to it is carrying Ope’s coffin, and that isn’t doing him any favors. It helps a little when they come into church and Jax is the only one there, the only judging face. Chibs guides Juice into Tig’s usual seat, sits in his own, then meets Jax’s eyes as he tries to find the words. 

He’s still trying to find the words for this, trying to work out his statement when the feels the warmth of Juice’s hand over his and hears Juice say, “It was me, Jax. The current RICO leverage? It was all me.”

Chibs jerks his face around, meets calm brown eyes as Juice says, “I’d take it back if I could, but I can’t, and it was all me. And I’ll accept whatever you decide, as long as Chibs doesn’t have to do it.” He hasn’t looked at Jax yet, is still holding Chibs’s gaze as he says, “Don’t do that to him. Happy - even Tig - is fine. Just not Chibs.”

“Fuck,” Jax mutters, scrubbing his hands over his face, then reaching for his phone. “Fuck, Juice. I gotta make some calls.” He eyes Chibs. “I don’t know exactly what’s going on here, but I can trust you to make sure he stays here?”

“’Course, Jacky,” he says, finds that he’s surprised at how dead his voice sounds.

As soon as the heavy church doors swing shut behind Jax, Juice leans his head against Chibs’s shoulder. “Don’t tell him,” Juice whispers. “Let this stay ours, okay?”

Chibs brings his hand up, scrubs it over the Mohawk. He sees this for what it is – Juice trying to protect him. “Aye lad,” he says quietly. “Aye.”

-End


End file.
